Mike Ross and Gootecks have Ricki Ortiz over to teach them how to make almost any character in the game hype. Starting with "Army Poison," Ricki sets the stage for some extremely exciting matches. Even Mike Ross admits after seeing her play the Final Fight veteran, "Maybe it's time I revisit this character!"

Can Gootecks play a Poison that matches Ricki's? Can Mike Ross actually make "Mike Ross reads?" Who is Ricki's second favorite character in the game? Wait. Who is Ricki's favorite?

Even though it's only her fifth time playing the game online, Ricki makes a great point after someone takes the CC crew's points and runs. "You can't get revenge. You can't offer them a money match . . . You could have gotten beat by Donald Duck for all you know."

Join the crew as they hang out with one of the greatest U.S. players in the history of Ultra Street Fighter 4.

/r/Kappa|Poongko has battled against the very best the international FGC has to offer. Specifically, he's gone up against all of what many call the Japanese gods of fighting games.

However, Poongko has own list of "chosen players." This list was revealed by BE|Nemo in a recent tweet. The reason, according to Nemo, is that he "thinks people who can be good at several games are amazing."

They're listed in no particular order, and some of the choices won't be shocking, but what's a bit strange is that BE|Nemo followed up with another message. This time, it includes a player not mentioned in the original list that Poongko calls a gaming prodigy.

Posted by John 'Velociraptor' Guerrero
— August 1, 2015 at 1:34 p.m. PDT

It's no secret that Capcom likes to place Easter Egg references in the backgrounds of fighting game stages. Some are more obvious than others, such as the Fei Long movie banner in the Street Fighter 5 Chinese street stage.

Another of the more conspicuous inclusions is found in Street Fighter 4's Skyscraper stage, wherein one of the characters in the background looks an awful lot like a member of the Andore family. A few less conspicuous character references have been discovered in both SF4 and SF5.

In the USF4's half pipe stage, there's a billboard in the background, high above the fight cam's regular field of view. If you perform a move that manipulates the camera correctly, such as Ken's ultra one, when on the extreme left side of the stage, you'll see this:

Click images for larger versions

Both Final Fight's Haggar and Street Fighter's R. Mika appear on the distant billboard. We checked at home ourselves, to make sure this was legitimate. That's not all we've seen though, hit the jump to see what's been found in the train station stage of SF5.

Posted by John 'Velociraptor' Guerrero
— August 1, 2015 at 7:39 p.m. PDT

Eduardo "EG|PR Balrog" Perez has had quite an impressive fighting game career thus far, consistently placing amongst the top ranks of almost every Street Fighter 4tournament he goes to, and doing so primarily with the seldom-used Balrog.

PR Rog turned some heads today on Twitter when he stated the following in regards to playing multiple games at high level:

If you want to be the good at fighting game just stick to it. Playing multiple games make you play worse. I had to learn the hard way. :)

Juggling multiple characters within a single game can be difficult enough. Dealing with completely different mechanics, engines and overall universes may very well be close to impossible on a competitive scale.

We reached out to Eduardo to see if he'd go into a bit more detail on how came to this conclusion, and he was happy to oblige. Hit the jump below to see what he had to say.

This year's EVO was not just high quality in terms of the amazing matches that were seen between all of the games played, but it also set a precedent in terms of stream viewership. Viewer counts were very high throughout the weekend, and now that the weekend has ended, it proves interesting to go back and see how each game fared during the busiest day, Sunday.

Viewer totals for the main stage games were collected and compiled at peak viewership between the Twitch and Topanga streams, to show the true viewership for each title.

Though we've seen quite a bit coming out of the Street Fighter 5 beta, many have had concerns over chains and target combos overshadowing links in combos, and combos becoming typical and stale due to such.

Thankfully, we have two combo videos that show links are alive and well, and that Street Fighter 5's combo system is actually quite flexible.

These Ryu combo videos showcase some tight links, unexpected conversions, and brand new combo opportunities that didnt exist before for the world warrior.

Even if you didn't tune into the Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- finals at EVO 2015 this weekend, you probably already heard about Woshige's "what are you standing up for?" moment.

During the winners semi finals set with Ogawa, Woshige put a quick beating on the Zato-1 player. After scoring the KO, Woshige jumped up to celebrate taking the set, but what he didn't realize is that there was still one more round to go.

By the time he came to and spotted his oversight, Ogawa was already ending the match.

This moment has spread across the internet at an incredible pace. The clip was so widespread in fact, that ESPN picked it up and devoted a short segment of a recent Sports Center broadcast entirely to it.

Posted by John 'Velociraptor' Guerrero
— July 26, 2015 at 12:45 p.m. PDT

If you've been on Street Fighter's Twitter in the past few days, you've seen the constant ups and downs the team at Capcom have been experiencing since the less than spotless beta campaign started on Thursday.

The beta went down again last night around 9pm, and according to the tweet made just over an hour ago, won't be coming back online for the remainder of today.

The SFV beta will be inaccessable today as our servers are down for maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenince caused.

While many have felt disappointment, and rightfully so, during these last few days, it's important to keep in mind that the employees at Capcom are working incredibly hard through this process.

We can only imagine how difficult of a scramble it must be at headquarters right now, and would hope the community would offer patience. We'll update you as soon as we get word that servers are back online.

EVO 2015 -- the largest fighting game tournament of the year -- has concluded. Every year, we think that we've seen the absolute most hype moments, and the next year we're proven so wrong.

This year has followed the same pattern and was host to an incredible amount of amazing moments. As we do with all major tournaments, tonight we're going to highlight some of our favorite moments from the event starting with the Ultra Street Fighter 4 portion of the tournament.

Four rounds straight, no SPDs

In top 32, LU|Alex Valle faced off against one of the strongest Sagat players in the world and last year's Ultra Street Fighter 4 runner-up, Bonchan. Instead of picking Ryu and jumping into a fireball war with Bonchan, Valle decided to pick Hugo, a character that doesn't do too well against Sagat, usually...

Valle brought down the house with some of the best Hugo play we've ever seen. Not only did Valle win this set, but he did it by scoring four rounds straight against Bonchan and also refrained from using SPDs the entire match (aside from Hugo's running grab, if that counts.)

To see just how incredibly well Alex played, check out the GIFs below.

Click images for animated versions

Hit the jump to see highlights from MCZ|Daigo, Infiltration, EG|Momochi, and more.

Even though people just got alpha access to Rising Thunder, an upcoming PC fighting game headed by Seth Killian and taking a free to play, simple controls approach, it would seem that people are already getting to work figuring out the game's ins and outs.

Doopliss has created a great combo video showing off the game, and each character's potential. It would seem that despite the simplified control approach the game has a lot to offer in terms of tech and combo goodness.

Sergey also adds to this with a 60% reset as the character Edge, utilizing a dash under set up unique to him.

The Excellent Adventures series with Mike Ross and Gootecks is always a great way to have some laughs over some solid Street Fighter, as well as engaging discussion. Today's episode, featuring none other than EG|Ricki Ortiz, is definitely sure to fulfill both of those expectations.

All three of them step up to the barrage of Xbox Live players, with a Chun-Li player named Sleepy Cats giving Mike a hard time. Gootecks brings out a surprise Rufus, and Mike plays Makoto as they struggle against a top ten Vega.

Will they be able to overcome these challenges? Or will they have to be saved by the great Ricki Ortiz for her last appearance in the two episode block?

Mortal Kombat X was released in April of this year, and so far, its sales have been strong.

How strong, you ask? Well, according to Fortune -- a business magazine published by Time -- Mortal Kombat X is the best selling of the year so far.

It should be noted that the sales numbers calculated were not console specific, but actually illustrate the total number of copies sold across all platforms. Additionally, this chart lists the best-selling games, not best-selling new releases. Hence, you'll see games such as Super Smash Bros. 4 make an appearance.

Posted by John 'Velociraptor' Guerrero
— July 22, 2015 at 1:44 p.m. PDT

Anyone lucky enough to have, or have had, the privilege of attending a modern arcade will know that competing with the leisure of online gaming is not an easy business.

Often times these arcades are the glue that hold pockets of the fighting game community together, and so when tragedy such as yesterday's burglary at Heart of Gaming in North Acton, London occurs, it's devastating.

Over £5,000, about $7,800, worth of next generation consoles and monitors were taken from the arcade. The owners of HoG have started a GoFundMe in an attempt to compensate for their losses.

If you can sympathize, and are able to contribute in any way, please help out your fellow community members in their season of struggle. While this is certainly an instance characterized by negativity and loss, let's look at it more so as a time of opportunity to show off a strong presence of community.

Thank you to Jimmy The Cow, SonOfABtchStick and an anonymous tipper for the submissions.

Posted by John 'Velociraptor' Guerrero
— July 28, 2015 at 2:55 p.m. PDT

They've been a part of the Street Fighter series since the beginning, though the loser actually speaks in SF1, and tradition continues in the latest iteration as the Street Fighter characters talk a little trash after each victory.

Whether it be a back-handed compliment from Chun-Li, a death threat from M.Bison, or some random fighting comment from Ryu, these fighters are never at a loss for words after a victory.

Blogger Mattfryou has researched and posted nearly all available win quotes from the current cast of SF5. Each character has a custom quote for each other character, and before you ask the answer is no. Unfortunately there are no Tuesday quotes from Bison.

Click images for larger versions

You can see all the current character quotes, including some from Ken, over at V-Trigger. Thank you to Mattfryou for sharing this with us.